This invention relates to support pillows, and specifically to a pillow specially designed to support a baby's head and body while breastfeeding or bottle feeding, and also to be used to support the baby while interacting with it in a variety of other activities.
Heretofore when a mother breast fed her baby she had to cradle the baby in her arms to hold the baby's head at the required height to align with her breast. Holding a baby like this for any length of time puts considerable stress on the mother's body. A common complaint of breastfeeding mothers is lower back pain. A sleeping pillow or furniture pillow could be used to help support the baby's body; however, most pillows of this type have rounded or sloping edges and provide little support where needed. So short of piling many pillows on top of one another it is difficult to get the proper height and support from one easy-to-handle pillow.
Nursing slings have been designed to hold a baby with the weight of the sling pulling on the mother's neck and upper back. This method puts considerable stress on the mother's neck and back. Reversing the baby to nurse on the other breast can be quite cumbersome and annoying to the baby. A sling type device also tends to pull the baby's head and body toward the mother, which restricts the baby's freedom of movement. A sling type device is not suitable for bottle feeding because of this.
Medical and therapeutic pillows are known in various forms, including as shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,555,582, 3,757,364, 4,233,700 and 4,320,543. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,555,582 and 4,233,700 both show support cushions with wedge-shaped components, but neither has the features or the advantages of the present invention as described below.